Yep, I have added it to the first post as well. Also from wololo: wololo.net/wagic/2011/12/27/ps-vita-compulsory-system-update-1-510/

PS Vita compulsory system Update 1.510

Today as I was using the PS Vita “content manager” in order to copy some files to the PS Vita, the content manager refused to start until I updated my firmware to official update 1.510. (This literally happened 10 minutes ago)

What surprises me is that the vita was disconnected, so I am assuming the update order came from the client on my PC (Update: confirmed. And the Vita refuses to run the content manager if the PC is not connected to the net).

A friendly advice to anybody who tries to “investigate” the Vita like I do: install the content manager on a PC that has no network connection (Update: I think “bastards” is the first word that came to my mouth when I saw that the vita refuses to connect to the PC if the Pc is not connected to the internet. This is really really concerning, and I hope a few people will have a look at the code of the PC “content manager” client.

I’d be extremely happy to know why Sony is spying on me through the content manager when I’m copying my adult movies to the vita...), and disconnect the Vita as well. It seems Sony has a possibility to prevent anyone from playing with the Content Manager too much. This also confirms that the PSP Exploit we’re working on is more or less moot, since as soon as it is made public, Sony will prevent people from copying the files to their Vita with an obligatory firmware update.

This is really twisted, and I could swear a compulsory update in order to use such a core feature of the console might be illegal in some countries... we’re far from the “you have a choice to stop using linux” here, it’s more of a “you have a choice to stop copying mp3 and movies from and to the console”.

I have no clue what this update is for, but I’ll have a look. I assume it patches some of the weird bugs that people reported, including (but not limited to) the weird “demo mode” glitch, and other “freeze in the xmb” type of errors...

Video: Picodrive Sega Megadrive Emulator Demo via HBL on PS Vita

Following up on his previous confirmation, today Sony PlayStation Vita hacker wololo has made available a video below demonstrating the Half Byte Loader (HBL) running the Picodrive Sega Megadrive emulator with Sonic & Knuckles on PS Vita.

To quote: Update: One important clarification: This video shows HBL running on the latest firmware 1.510. The firmware update that happened today does not patch the exploit, unlike what some sites are saying.

A few days ago Japanese developer Teck4 posted a picture of a “hello world” running on the PS Vita through the PSP emulator. I contacted him immediately with some help from Mamosuke, and I soon got enough information to start working on porting Half Byte Loader to this exploit (note that Teck4 is also working on exploiting this vulnerability further, but I don’t know how far he’s been).

What you see in the video below is the game “Sonic & Knuckles” running in picodrive, a Megadrive emulator for the PSP.

Yes, I’m running an emulator inside a hacked emulator on the Vita, that’s kind of cool. There’s lots to say about this ongoing work, but first let me state that, for once, this HBL port is entirely my work, except for the underlying PSP exploit which is initially from Teck4. I’ve been testing other people’s work for a while, so it was about time I got back to coding myself

Now that my ego is satisfied, let’s move on to the details of the video below. I have good news, bad news, and ugly news. But first check the video below, the first usable hack on the PS vita, 10 days after the console is released

1. THE GOOD

This is technically HBL rising from the deads, running on the PS Vita, and loading the picodrive emulator. Usually I would show you the entire loading process, but you’ll understand that some of the things I do (in particular the exploit used) need to be kept under wraps until the whole thing is made public (if it is ever made public, read more below).

I hope however that given my reputation on the PSP scene this won’t be categorized as a fake, please understand that I can’t show much this time. Picodrive is one of the easiest homebrews to run on HBL for some reason, that’s why I’m using it in my test. People who’ve used HBL a lot in its early days will recognize the sound glitch, this is some 22kHz sound being played at 44kHz, or the other way around, I can never remember.

That’s because the PSP emulator is using PSP’s firmware 6.60, for which HBL’s syscall estimation code seems to be a bit useless. (I am still pending some reply from Teck4 to see if it would make sense to “officially” involve more hackers on this port, and see if we can fix those syscalls problems. For now, as far as I know I’m the only one who made it that far on the Vita, and I feel kind of lonely on this new hacking scene ^^).

Another good piece of news for me is that before HBL could run Homebrews so “smoothly” on the PSP, it took us several months (I can’t remember exactly, 3 month maybe before we got it running “ok-ish” ?), while here it took me 3 days to get it to a usable state. Clearly, we didn’t lie when we said HBL would be portable to new game exploits

So, that’s the good, I’ve proven to myself that it is possible to run HBL and actual homebrews on the Vita. With little effort, HBL could probably be improved to some extent on that exploit, and run a few useful homebrews.

2. The bad

There are slightly bad news too. One is the syscall estimation algorithm being busted, as I explained above. I discussed a bit with JJS, and it is probable that if a function is not imported by the game itself, we might not be able to use it at all. I’ll have a closer look (if I decide to dig further on this) to see if this can be improved, but that could greatly limit the amount of homebrews that can be played on this.

Another issue is that the time currently needed to load/run homebrews for the “end user” is a bit too long to my taste. In its current state, for now I don’t think this is (or will be, even if improved) very useful for the end user. Basically, if I want to run PSP homebrews for now, it’s way easier and cheaper to do so on a PSP, even on an unhacked one, through HBL.

So, the overall uselessness of this makes me wonder if it should be kept secret in order for other hackers to do some research on it, or if it should really be released. I wouldn’t like people to point fingers at me if Sony patches some security flaws after this exploit goes public… I won’t take that decision alone (since I’m not the only one knowing the exploit), obviously, and there’s still time until the US/EU release, but I’m seriously considering the options here.

I have also yet to find a “good” way to install and run homebrews. I thought I had found a convenient way, but it didn’t work as expected. I’ll dig more on that, but it seems the PSP filesystem, as seen through the emulator on the vita, is a bit tricky and sneaky...

The ugly

There is, however, far worse than the little concerns above. What concerns me to a great extent is that I realized today that Sony can potentially spy everything we do with the content manager. Today I was forced to update my PS Vita to the new firmware. The content manager refuses to run if its PC client is not connected to the internet, and it refuses to run if the console doesn’t have the latest firmware.

This means not only that Sony can force you to update your Vita firmware whenever they feel like it (something they never dared to do on the PSP or the PS3), but also that every time you copy a file from or to your Vita, some information is possibly sent to Sony’s servers. I half joked about me copying my adult movies to the Vita and Sony knowing about it, but it really concerns me that Sony is spying on the files I have on my hard drive just because I bought one of there gadgets.

I’m thinking here that the upcoming hacks for the PS Vita will involve lots of legal fights. It seems to me that unless Sony can prove they are not spying on their users, it is potentially illegal to require the tool to be connected while the content manager is running. Something as big as CarrierIQ could happen to them if their customers are willing to take it to court at some point (that’s an official call to network engineers would would like to analyze what’s going on when the content manager is connected to the Intern...).

Incidentally, this is also means that Sony could be already aware of the hack and the techniques we’ve been using to trigger it, assuming they take a close look at the interactions between users’ PC and the Vita.

Anyways, despite these massive concerns, I’m proud to announce that I got some homebrew to run on the Vita 10 days after its release… as said before by BlackFire, it’s like “posting a sticker on a fortress”. Not very useful, but a message to Sony that we’re around

Thats are phenomenon news. But i'm doupt that the users will take legal action against sony in case of the spying thing. They are also spying on the ps3 like error report or what games you have played and so on. But we can't do something against sony. In europe its legal to hack your console and do what ever you want with it.

For sure its illegal to download and play pirated games. I hope that some other dev's will jump on the train and first block the content manager and some other stuff that sony is using to spy on us.

The content manager refuses to run if its PC client is not connected to the internet, and it refuses to run if the console doesn’t have the latest firmware.

This is BAD on so many levels that I don't even know where to start ...

Even leaving asside the "spying" factor from the Sony's side (which could be hopefully at least partially damped by properly configured firewall rules) the most annoying part is when you'll be travelling and trying to either move some data to Vita's card or backup some game saves or swap the games loaded to your mem card and you'll be unable to do so if you can't (or don't want due to the hight cost) to get your PC online - how MORONIC is that?? There is a BIG storm heading towards Sony for this very very soon ... I'll have a look if this could be tricked either by not having any network on the particular PC at all or having some redirection to the local files (like in case of version spoofing for PS3) - if not - I'm on Sony's back!

And as already stated above - what will users do with their Vitas once they'll decide NOT to update to the latest fw - for whatsoever reason? Use it as shiny expensive doorstop?? This MUST be ilegal at least in half of the world - you're effectivelly locked out from both accessing / backing up the current data on Vita itself (or any other card bound to it) as well as from uploading / restoring any saved content to it. There is no other way to read / write Vita's mem cards as there are no external card readers for it and even if there will be some they'll be pretty much useless as it's DRM ridden (same way like if you try use / acces PS3 hard drive anywhere else) so we're pretty much f-ed here! Bad bad BAD!!

Also - there is no direct way to backup individual game saves from Vita to PC or PS3 - you must always copy the whole game specific data (which includes any localy installed data, patches and DLCs) so instead of copying over and storing just a few hundreds of KBs you'll usually end up wasting both time and space by copying tens to hundreds of MBs each time you want to protect and backup your game save. To top this all off - games with saves their data directly on their own game card (e.g. not using the extra Vita memory card) cannot be be backed up at all - tough luck - and also if you try to use the same game on another PSN account you can't gain trophies on it unless you completely reset the whole game / card.

The fact, that Vita doesn't even support multiply PSN accounts and that you need to perform the full reset and initial setup every time you want to change the account (plus having the mem card also locked to specific PSN account) makes this whole system so horrible I can't believe Sony even managed to release in such state. The biggest type of Big Brother-ism imaginable - "WELL DONE" Sony!

Sooo even if it is illegal on half of the world it is also LEGAL on the other half of the world TO HACK THAT THING.

Even the DRM can't protect them cause if i hack my console and use everything to my needs sony can't do anything. It's legal to back up my games i've payed for. It's legal to hack my games i've payed for. It's legal to hack my hdd i've payed for. And so on.

It's not legal to share protected files like drm games or system files but on other hand it's legal to share that information how to do.

From this point of view the psvita will have a epic fail OR this thing will get hacked like no other thing before

Let us wait a bit for the us and eu release and then we will see. Also the ps3 have the vita keys in here FW. Newer FW's like 4.0 should allready have this key. We have new NAND/NOR flasher that can read/write nearly every flash of devices we knowe. Such as smartphone's, tablet's, portable media player's, tv's, Camcorder's, digi cam's and not only consoles. Some other could say we are well armed for this new baby and just wait to arrive the orient

This is BAD on so many levels that I don't even know where to start ...

Yeah, so we can't use the PSvita via PC... because they thought it would be best to force it to only operate if the PC is connected to the internet..

seriously sony ? what kind of faggotry is this, people who don't have internet but wan't to upload music or movies or w/e to their PSvita's can't do all?? all for what ? some damn security... screw off sony

i do hope someone can fix this damn lockout bullshit (as for those in Europe, they won't need to hide because as others said... in europe it's legal to hack the shit out of something wereas here or in the US it isn't... freaking greedy company.)

Freaking seriously? My "I'm gonna buy it regardless of whether it can be hacked or not" opinion just went out the window. I simply refuse to buy Sony's crap until they stop being complete fools with everything they make. This has to stop somewhere and it WILL be here. They need to know that their users will not put up with DRM everything because it WILL NOT work in today's society.

They must think they're invincible to legal troubles now since that agreement update awhile ago. But all I need to do is sign up for a new PSN account and send in a copy/paste letter stating "I <real name> using your PSN service as <PSN ID> will not forfeit my right to participate in class action lawsuits. I, however, will not start or participate in any class action lawsuit that is found to be frivolous in nature." and you're following their rules and still sticking it to them.

I'm surprised they didn't learn from the rootkits on their Audio CDs... history repeats itself. While we're at it why not make a lawsuit or addendum the theoretical one on the content manager about how the ps3 sends data on what you've been doing to them. Guess I'll wait a few weeks after release before deciding to get the vita or the 3ds.

I like how everyone is angry about this but no one is coming up with basic ideas to help solving this. Lawsuits take time and money, we need to work out ways around this before attempting a struggle on a product that's barely out.

Maybe with more time, and devs, they can figure out how to redirect it's firmware check. It might be as simple as just having a .html document on your computer saying "PSV Firmware 1.51".